31 comments:

How I wish I could attend the Chicago festival, but the disappointment is lessened a bit by the two small festivals I attended last week right here in my home town of Tampere.

In CinemaDrome, a small genre movie fest, I saw Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau, Everly and War Between the Planets, a bonkers Italian scifi film from 1966. And in Loud Silents, a silent movie festival, I saw Meren kasvojen edessä (Before the Eyes of the Sea), a Finnish silent film from 1926, accompanied live by a six-piece orchestra. Plus I watched The Core on Netflix. Not a bad week.

War Between the Planets was really fun and watching it in a theater with a crowd made it even better. Ridiculous plot, effects on a shoestring budget and hammy acting. My favorite line, after massive earthquakes have wreaked havoc all around the planet: "I think it's a space problem".

The silent film was an interesting story with some supernatural and even horror elements, but the draw was obviously seeing a silent film with live music. A great experience and looking forward to the DVD of the movie they're gonna release with that performance recorded live as its music track.

What I should have said was that I'm envious. I live 10 minutes from Washington DC and you would think living in our nations capitol that we have some cool stuff to go to like that but it's very few and far between. This city is really lacking in film festivals.

Are there any F-heads familiar with the Nashville area? I'm moving there next weekend and would like to know of any good theaters to catch a movie. Especially ones that specialize in smaller indie flicks. Right now I live in Memphis and there is only one decent "art-house" theater. But even it used up two of its four screens to show the Best Marigold Whatever 2.

I came up with what I think is the perfect way to save the Die Hard franchise and keep Bruce. You call the film "McLane" and make it a cop/detective movie akin to stuff like The French Connection, Heat, Bullitt, etc... It doesn't have to be all over the top but can still be really exciting. Have Argyle be in trouble and McClane is assigned to the case. Or make it it's own entity and don't even bother trying to be clever with connecting it to Die Hard. I don't know. Regardless, I want Shane Black to write it and I want him, Baxley or McTiernan to direct. Damnit! I just really miss the real John McClane on screen.

They should just remake it with Channing Tatum playing the John Mcclane role. Maybe set it in the White House instead of a skyscraper this time... and instead of a black cop helping him it could be a black president helping him. And they should get that dude who directed Godzilla 98 to direct it. Done.

I will add to Kino's comment and Chaybee's Die Hard comment by saying I will stand up for A Good Day to Die Hard even though everyone hates it. The first act car chase is one of the best I've ever seen. John McClane flipping the bird during the final explosion is a great moment as well. The director's cut actually removes the Lucy McClane scenes for the better. Give it another chance and take it for what it is.

Now that shared universes are all the rage, I'd like to highlight woefully underrated crossover movie ahead of its time... time being, of course, the fire in which we burn. That's right, get ready to sing the Scanning for Life Forms song and separate the saucer section, because it's time to re-enter the energy ribbon that is Star Trek Generations! :P

In terms of putting money in the pockets of studios/filmmakers I suppose there isn't much difference (though there's a possibility that the original buyer might not have bought it if he wasn't factoring in the resell so buying a used copy retroactively facilitating the original sale), but the moral difference should be obvious to anyone not just trying to justify immoral behaviour.

A used copy means a copy was originally bought, so while Fox might not make any money off the $2 you pay for Night at the Museum (the 'you' in this case has terrible taste), they did make money off the person that bought it the first time. A pirated movie puts money in the pocket of no one. Plus, DVD is a one-to-one ratio, meaning each person buys a copy for him/herself; pirated movies need one copy and can be viewed by millions.

It's so far from being the same fucking thing that you should question your friendship with this person.

And by that logic, if you borrow a movie from a friend, you're "stealing it," etc. etc. As soon as you try to justify stealing by saying that any form of movie viewing that doesn't directly benefit the creator is essentially as bad, you just create an endless stream of justifications. Besides, buying used DVDs from, say, a record store or a smaller movie seller promotes the sale of movies in general, so the logic is flawed anyway.

I’d say it’s a bit more like equating (a) stealing a kid’s DNA and making yourself a clone of that kid, versus (b) legally adopting that kid. Or (a) trading a bank teller or someone else two legal $10 bills for a legal $20 bill, vs. (b) trading someone two legal $5 bills for a counterfeit $20 bill. With a used movie sale (Blu-ray, DVD, VHS, other), like with any other bought and sold physical product, the 2nd sale can be eliminated, while producing the same individual expenditures and chain of control and custody of the item. If Jack buys a $20 Blu-ray on Day 1, and 1 year later, sells it to Jill used for $10, the effect would be roughly the same as if Jill had originally given Jack $10 for the two of them to buy the Blu-ray on Day 1, with Jack maintaining control and custody of the item for the first year, and Jill maintaining control and custody of the item after that. With a pirated movie sale, if the 2nd sale is eliminated, this is akin to Jack and Jill buying a $20 Blu-ray on Day 1, then making a copy of the Blu-ray, such that at some point after that, Jack and Jill now each have their own separate copies of the Blu-ray to maintain control and custody over. Whoever keeps the original Blu-ray has sacrificed nothing, while the person who keeps the illegal copy now has illegally produced intellectual property belonging to someone else. My observation is that, in the age of digital media, this type of equivalency argument is more often than not used to support the proposition that producers are being ripped off by used physical media sales, and therefore they should be eliminated, rather than the proposition that there’s nothing morally wrong with piracy. As Sol wrote, used sales basically go hand in hand with the market for sale of new items, affecting new unit prices and new units purchased. However, piracy eats away at that model. Legal producers can’t possibly adjust prices to account for it.

Really looking forward to it. I've bought a few films just for that, and now they're just sitting on the shelf waiting and I'm tempted to watch them. But I'll stay strong and save them for the special occasion.

Bought Ninja III: The Domination, Don't Deliver Us from Evil, Starcrash, The Last American Virgin and The Hidden. All are new to me.

You and I are on the same page, May 1st I was very happy about it being only a month away! Well, flu version of happy, which sounds like yaaaarrrrgghhhssaay instead of yay. Must start buying some new movies to go with my new Coffy shirt!

I took a break from my pre-A:AoU marathon of MCU movies (it's going well - I'm 3/4 through Iron Man - I'm not sure I like these movies as much as I thought I did the first time through - are any of them really GREAT on their own merits or just "great FOR A COMIC BOOK MOVIE"?) and watched Blow Out for the first time Friday night - now THAT's a great movie - just wow - haven't really stopped thinking about it since. I've always liked De Palma but this was enough to catapult him up to one of my favourite directors (really good interview with him on the Criterion disc as well). I was even able to look past recent Travolta creepiness to really enjoy his performance as well. It's a great movie fan movie too as there are several filmmaking processes shown in lingering and loving detail - highly recommend it to everyone here.

So I know Im a bit late to the game but for some reason I've been on a Stallone kick lately and finally saw Tango & Cash for the first time and wow what a movie. If anyone here ever says that Tony Stark or one of the other Avengers is quipping too much I say show them this movie and they'll change their tune.

The performances are super broad, the villain ridiculous with Jack Palance looking the whole time like he just found Curly's Gold. That being said this flick was wonderful junk food time for me- even the part where spoiler alert Jack Palance goes into his hall of mirrors he has in his office for some reason. I misd good buddy cop movies, when was the last good one (minus the spooflike 22 Jump Street)